NBA player Paul George of the Indiana Pacers is covering the latest issue of Slam magazine. The 23-year-old Palmdale, CA-native didn’t play big-time AAU ball until the summer after his junior year of high school and didn’t star on his high school team until he was a senior. He ultimately ended up going 10th in the 2010 NBA Draft. He’s now the face of the first-place team in the east. And he’s still not satisfied.

“This is definitely where I want to be, but it’s not where I want to end at,” says George. “I want to be MVP. I want to be Defensive Player of the Year. I want to be First-Team All-NBA. I want to be a Gold medalist. I want to be a hall of famer. I want to be a Champion. Everything that’s the highest or the greatest that you can do, I want to do that.”

Paulette George (Paul’s mother) and his grandmother always knew that he would be special from the moment he was born on May 2, 1990:

“My grandmother, she’s passed away some years now, always used to say, ‘That baby’s going to be special,’” says Paulette. “I was like, ‘Really?’ She said, ‘Yeah. When kids have pinholes in their ears that means they’re gonna be special.’”

Pacers rookie Solomon Hill said, “Paul’s mentality is what makes him so good . “His mentality that he wants to be the best two-way player. It’s that he’s not just about scoring; he wants to get stops as well. When you have guy like that, it really shows you the bigger picture. It’s not about trying to put up as many points as you can; it’s about being efficient on the offensive end and stopping your player. That’s something that’s really different about him.”